Halloween Parade

by Lou Reed

There's a downtown fairy singing out 'Proud Mary'
As she cruises Christopher Street
And some Southern queen is acting loud and mean
Where the docks and the Badlands meet

This Halloween is something to be sure
Especially to be here without you

There's a Greta Garbo and an Alfred Hitchcock
And some black Jamaican stud
There's five Cinderellas and some leather drags
I almost fell into my mug

There's a Crawford, Davis, and a tacky Cary Grant
And some homeboys looking for trouble down here from the Bronx

But there ain't no Hairy and no Virgin Mary
You won't hear those voices again
And Johnny Rio and Rotten Rita
You'll never see those faces again

This Halloween is something to be sure
Especially to be here without you

There's the Born-Again Losers and the Lavender Boozers
And some crack team from Washington Heights
The boys from Avenue B, the girls from Avenue D
And Tinkerbell in tights

This celebration somehow gets me down
Especially when I see you're not around

There's no Peter Pedantic saying things romantic
In Latin, Greek, or Spic
There's no three bananas or Brandy Alexander
Dishing all their tricks

It's a different feeling that I have today
Especially when I know you've gone away

There's a girl from Soho with a t-shirt saying, 'I Blow'
She's with the 'Jive Five Two Plus Three'
And the girls for pay dates are giving cut rates
Or else doing it for free

The past keeps knock, knock, knocking on my door
And I don't want to hear it anymore

No consolations, please, for feeling funky
I got to get my head above my knees
But it makes me mad, and mad makes me sad
And then I start to freeze

In the back of my mind I was afraid it might be true
In the back of my mind I was afraid that they meant you

The Halloween parade
At the Halloween parade
At the Halloween parade
See you next year at the Halloween parade